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Euripides in Macedon Author(s): William Ridgeway Reviewed work(s): Source: The Classical Quarterly, Vol. 20, No. 1 (Jan.

, 1926), pp. 1-19 Published by: Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/636237 . Accessed: 13/03/2013 20:45
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THE

CLASSICAL
JANUARY,

QUARTERLY
1926.

EURIPIDES

IN MACEDON.

ALL are agreed that towards the end of his long life Euripides left Athens

and went to the court of Archelaus, king of Macedon. From Plato' and many other sources we know that Archelaus was the illegitimate son of Perdiccas II., by Simiche, a slave girl, and had succeeded to his father by murdering his uncle Alcetas, his half-brother, and his cousin. As these events occurred in 413 or 412 B.C., the poet's visit must have been later than that date, and has with probability been placed soon after the production of his Orestes at Athens in 01.
92. 4 (409-8).

Archelaus was a man of outstanding ability. How he organized the kingdom of Macedon we shall soon see. Moreover, he had a genuine love of culture of all kinds. Hardly was he seated on the throne before he began to invite poets, such as Euripides and Agathon,2 and other eminent persons, amongst whom it is said that even Socrates3 was included, to his court. This was at Aegae, situated in the ancient Pieria to the west of the river Axius (Vardar), and it remained the capital of Macedon until Philip II. removed the seat of government to the little town of Pella4 where he had been reared, some thirty miles from Aegae and like it on the Pierian side of the Axius.5 It is further admitted that Euripides when in Macedon wrote at least two plays, the Bacchae and the Archelaus. I will presently urge that the Rhesus was also composed and performed in the same period and country. We know that the Bacchae, as also the Alcmaeon at Corinth and the Iphigeneia in A ulis, were produced at Athens after the poet's death by his son Euripides, but there is no reason why the Bacchae may not have been previously performed in Macedon, a view supported by the famous passage in that play (408 cf. 565) in praise of Pieria. But the A rchelaus is our first concern. No one has doubted that it was written and performed for Archelaus, the poet's patron. The fragments8 of this play (mostly preserved in the Florilegiumn of Stobaeus) amount to some eighty-four lines, which not only enable us to form some opinion of the style of the drama, but also show that the version of the story of Archelaus, the founder
' Gorg. 470D-471 ; cf. Athen., I1ar. Hist. XII. 43. 2 Schol. on Ar. Ran. 85.

p. 217d ; Aelian,

5 Id. 277. 43 makes Pieria


NO. I. VOL. XX.

4 Strabo 277. 14 (Didot).

3 Arg. I. to Ar. Nub.

extend

to the

Axius. 6 Nauck, Trag. Graec. Fragm., pp. 426-436. A fragment of the play in Oxyrhynchus Papyri, Vol. III., p. 66 (reprinted by von Arnim, Supplementum Euripideum, p. 8o), adds nothing for our purpose.
A

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of the monarchy, handed down by Hyginus,1 gives an accurate account of the argument of the play: 'Archelaus was a son of Temenus, king of Argos. Driven into exile by his brothers, he went into Macedonia (Mygdonia? M. Schmidt) to King Cisseus. The latter being hard pressed in war by his neighbours, promised the stranger his kingdom and his daughter in marriage if he saved him from his foes. Archelaus routed the enemy in a single battle and then asked the king to fulfil his promises. But the latter at the instance of his friends broke his word, and tried to destroy Archelaus by treachery. To that end he ordered a pit (fouea) to be dug, filled with charcoal and set on fire, with brushwood laid over it in order that Archelaus might fall into it. One of the king's slaves revealed the plot to Archelaus, who on hearing the tale requested the king to grant him a private interview; the latter consented and thereupon Archelaus seized him and flung him into the pitfall and thus despatched him.' He at once fled into Pieria (which later became part of Lower Macedonia) in accordance with an oracle from Apollo, under the guidance of a she-goat, and there founded a town (not far from the Axius) which he named Aegae after the goat. As some insist on a fundamental geographical and ethnological difference between Macedonia and Thrace, a few remarks on this point will not be out of place. Macedonia was merely a political term, originally the name of a very small district, called (it is said) from an old chieftain Macedo,2 and it gradually was extended to district after district of ancient Thrace, as the Temenids enlarged their kingdom. That the Macedni of whom Macedo was probably the eponymous hero were an Illyrian tribe is likely, but it must be remembered that save in dialect and the fashion of wearing the hair, there was no real distinction between the Illyrians and the aboriginal Thracians,3 both practising tattooing and thereby sharply distinguished from the Celtic tribes beyond the Danube. Homer4 seems to have made Thrace begin from Thessaly, the Peneius being the boundary (as it was of Macedonia in classical times), since Ares5 when coming 'from Thrace' to the Ephyrii and Phlegians who dwelt at the mouth of that river passed down it south of Olympus. Hera on her way .from Olympus to Troy passed first across Pieria, next Emathia and the mountains of Thrace, amongst which he reckons Athos, which formed part of the later Chalcidice. He likewise knew the Paeonians, from the river Axius,6 but nothing of Macedonia or Bottiaea. Strabo says that'of old Pieria, Olympus, Pimpla, and Leibethron were districts and mountains of Thrace, but now the Macedonians hold them.'7 He further says that Macedonia was of old called Emathia8 and that Pieria was part of it, and further that after the town of Dium [on the Thessalian frontier] comes the Haliacmon debouching into the Thermaic Gulf, and from this the sea-board of the gulf towards the north is called Pieria as far as the river Axius.9 Scholars dispute this because the district between
1 Fab. 219.

3 Ridgeway, pp. 351-2.

2 Strabo 275, 23 (Didot). Early Age of Greece, Vol. I.,

4 II. XIV. 226-7.

6 II. XVI. 288.


s Id. 275, 21.

5 II. XIII. 301. 7 Strabo 404, 38. 9 Id. 277, 43.

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EURIPIDES

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the Haliacmon and the Axius in classical times was Bottiaea, and because Alorus at the mouth of the Haliacmon is called a Bottiaean town. But there is no real difficulty in the same territory having two names, for the Bottiaeans were comparatively new-comers from Sicily and Iapygia, who had conquered that portion of the ancient Pieria between the Haliacmon and the Axius in which Pella was situated. Similarly, Pydna is termed both a town of Macedonia and a town of Pieria.1 There seems also no better reason for doubting that the district in which Aegae stood was also part of the ancient Pieria, that ancient district which took its name from the Thracian tribe of Pieres (who dedicated their land to the Muses). If not part of Pieria, it must have been part of Paeonia, for next to the Pierians on the north, wherever the frontier lay, was Paeonia, which also formed an important province of the Macedonian kingdom. The Paeonians were aboriginal Thracians, and they stretched right to the Pangean range, where their neighbours were the aboriginal Thracian Bessi, who had the shrine and oracle of Dionysus (infra). East of the Axius and south of Paeonia lay Mygdonia, another important province of early Macedon. But the Mygdonians were undoubtedly aboriginal Thracians. After the retreat of Xerxes, Alexander I. added to his realm all the region west of the Strymon, occupied by the Bisaltae and other Thracian tribes, and he thus got possession of the metalliferous mountains between the Strymon valley and Mygdonia. It is thus clear that the kingdom of Macedon, although starting from the Illyrians on the north-west, was mainly composed from Thessaly to the Strymon of territories known collectively as Thrace from the dawn of history and occupied by tribes of undoubted Thracian race. Just as the later Bottiaea was a district of Thrace, so the region later termed Chalcidice from the Chalcidian settlers was regarded as a part of Thrace by Homer, Herodotus, Thucydides and Strabo, and the settlers were termed the Chalcidians in Thrace. When the Macedonian kingdom later extended its boundary to the Hebrus and even to the Nestus, all the region thus added continued to be known as Thrace. Therefore any attempts to draw a sharp line between Macedonians and Thracians is unhistorical. Let us now return to the Archelaus. In fragm. 229 (Nauck) we not only have king Cisseus addressed by name, but a reference to fire,2 almost certainly the fire in the pitfall. On the other hand, Diodorus and Justin,3 Dexippus and Eusebius, etc., represent not Archelaus but one Caranus as the founder of the Macedonian monarchy. According to them Caranus was a Heraclide of the family of Temenus, and a brother of Phidon of Argos (747 B.c.), and he led into that region, which later became Lower Macedonia, a large body of Greeks. Following a flock of goats in the midst of a fierce storm of rain, he entered the town of Edessa unobserved by the inhabitants. Recalling an oracle by which he had
1

Strabo

277, 2 and 275, 10. a2Ac tLXE X~pas T7 7rro0XvLcXov

3 Justin VIII. I, XXIII. 2; Diod. Sic. Fragm. VII. 16, I (Didot); Plut. Alex. 2.

KLcr-oE,rerrrbo rvpl uap/Ia[peL.

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been bidden to seek a kingdom by the guidance of goats, he settled there, and changed its name to Aegae in commemoration of the event. From these two stories a series of archaic Macedonian silver coins with the type of a kneeling he-goat have been attributed with probability to Aegae,1 a view greatly strengthened by the occurrence of a goat on the bronze coins struck at Edessa, the name of Aegae in Roman Imperial times. According to Herodotus, neither Archelaus nor Caranus was the name of the founder of the Temenid house of Macedon, but Perdiccas; three brothersGauanes, Aeropus and Perdiccas-fled from Argos to Illyria and crossed into Upper Macedonia to the town of Lebaea. There they took service as free labourers with the chief, whose name is not given. One became horse-keeper, the second neatherd, and Perdiccas the youngest, shepherd. The chief's wife, in the ancient fashion, herself baked the bread. Before long she was astonished to see that the loaf baked for Perdiccas swelled to twice the size of the rest. When this had happened several times, she told her husband. He at once regarded it as a portent, sent for the three hirelings, and bade them leave his land. They asked for the wages due to them. The sun happened to be shining down the wide chimney of the house. Pointing to it, the king said: 'I give you the only wages you deserve.' The two elder brothers stood aghast, but the youngest, who happened to have a knife in his hand, said: ' O King, we accept your offer,' and with his knife he traced the outline of the sun on the wall, thrice drew the sunlight into his bosom, and then he and his brothers departed. One of those that stood by told the king what had happened. The latter enraged at the tale despatched horsemen to put them to death. Now there is a river in that region to which the descendants of the men from Argos still sacrifice as to a saviour, for this river, so soon as the sons of Temenus had crossed it, rose to such a height that the horsemen could not cross. The fugitives reached another district of Macedonia near the gardens known as those of Midas the son of Gordias, where grow natural roses having sixty petals, and where, according to the Macedonians, Silenus was captured. North of this lies Mount Bermion (Doxa). Here the children of Temenus settled, and gradually reduced the rest of Macedonia. According to Herodotus, Perdiccas was succeeded by Philip I.,he by Aeropus, he by Alcetas, he by Amyntas I., he by his son Alexander I., the contemporary of Xerxes. From Thucydides3 we learn that Alexander I. was succeeded by his son Perdiccas II., the father of Archelaus. This historian 4 tells us that Archelaus, by building fortresses, by horses, arms, and other military equipment, and by making good straight roads, did more to strengthen the kingdom than all the eight kings that preceded him, thus adding to the list one more than Herodotus gives. Thus while the later authorities put Caranus at the head of the list and place three others between him and Perdiccas, and Herodotus makes Perdiccas the founder, Thucydides, who has one more in his list than the latter, may have
1 Head, Hist. Numn.,p. 198 (ed. 2).
2 VIII. 137-9. 3 II. 99.

0 II. Too.

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IN MACEDON

had Caranus at the head of his list. It has to be observed that Herodotus makes Gauanes and Aeropus as well as Perdiccas founders of the monarchy. But it seems almost certain that Caranus is no other than the Gauanes of Herodotus, since with the change of v into p, or vice versa, the names are practically identical. There is therefore nothing strange in Caranus, the elder brother being placed at the head of the dynasty in some accounts. It must also be observed that Herodotus neither says anything about the settlement at Aegae, as the capital of Lower Macedonia, nor does he mention either form of the goat story, although he does say that Perdiccas the younger brother tended the small cattle (rC'XeCra' T c^v rpo3-rwv). But it must be remembered that Euripides was the contemporary of Herodotus, being born in 480 B.C., only four years later than the Father of History, and that as he actually lived at the Macedonian court he had every opportunity for learning the official accounts of the early days of the monarchy. The part played by the goat in the founding of Aegae may be regarded as just as authentic as that told by Herodotus, since in the former there is no miraculous element such as the swelling of the loaf related by the great historian. We may therefore take it that Euripides embodied in his drama the version in vogue at Aegae, but with one notable exception-the name of the founder of the dynasty. None of the early kings is called Archelaus in any version, and accordingly the writer of the anonymous life of Euripides is probably right in saying that, out of compliment to Archelaus, the poet composed a drama bearing the same name as that king. Whether it was Gauanes or Caranus or Perdiccas who stood at the head of the family tree of the royal house, Euripides could easily term him Archelaus, 'leader of the people'-a name peculiarly to the founder of as a Dio Now appropriate kingdom. Chrysostom (IV. 71) affirms that Archelaus was a goatherd and went to Macedonia driving goats, it would appear that in the play of Euripides Archelaus was made a goatherd and drove goats before him to Aegae, in which particular the drama then would have coincided with the versions of Justin and Diodorus, who represent Caranus as bringing a body of Greeks and being led by a flock of goats to Aegae. It is worth noting that the late grammarian Diomedes (whose date is quite uncertain), when laying down that sorrow is the proper theme for tragedy, says: 'For that reason Euripides, when king Archelaus requested him to compose a tragedy on himself, declined to do so lest anything might happen to that monarch, pointing out that the proper function of Tragedy was to deal with misfortune.' This story is by no means improbable, since the Chola Emperor Rajaraja I., of Tanjore, in the eleventh century A.D., had not only a drama called Rajaraja composed on his own exploits, but endowed in his lifetime a dramatic company to perform it in a great temple which he had built.1 Why might not a Macedonian king have had a like ambition? Euripides might well feel diffident about handling so delicate a theme as that of the king who had reached his throne by a series of family murders. But to write a drama on the
1 Ridgeway, Dramas and Dramatic Dances of Non-European Races, p. 204.

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WILLIAM

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founder of the monarchy was quite a natural thing, and accordingly he did it, taking the local version of the vicissitudes of the founder, whether he was called Caranus, Gauanes, or Perdiccas in the family story, and he simply termed him Archelaus. According to Agatharchides,' some said Euripides invested his hero Archelaus with some of the exploits of Temenus, and represented Teiresias as having lived for more than five generations. We next come to the place and the occasion of the play. There can be no doubt that the place was Aegae, the capital of the kingdom until after Philip II.'s accession in 359 B.C. That Aegae was the ancient seat of the Temenid kings is rendered certain from the fact that here were their tombs, as we know from a passage in Plutarch's Life of Pyrrhus of Epirus :2 'When Pyrrhus had defeated Antigonus Gonatas the Macedonian king (273 B.c.) and had made himself master of Aegae he treated the population harshly both in other respects and by leaving as garrison some of the Gauls who had taken part in the expedition. But the Gauls, being a race of insatiable greed, proceeded to dig open the tombs of the kings, whose funeral rites had been there performed, plundered the treasure and scattered their bones in sheer wantonness.' ' Pyrrhus paid little heed to this, either because he was too busy or because he was afraid to punish the barbarians. Consequently he gained an evil report with the Macedonians.' The concluding words of this passage demonstrate the veneration in which the Macedonians held the tombs and remains of their kings, who continued to be buried at Aegae at least down to the time of Alexander the Great. The relics of the great conqueror were only saved from ruthless desecration by the Gauls by another lawless act. When he died at Babylon in the fore-part of 322 B.C., Perdiccas, the son of Orontes, made elaborate preparations for carrying his master's remains to Aegae.3 In the end of 321 B.C., the great cortege set out, but before it reached Egypt Ptolemy Lagos had already made himself master of that country by putting to death Cleomenes the satrap appointed by Alexander. On the arrival of Perdiccas, Ptolemy soon persuaded the Macedonians who had charge of the body for conveyance to Aegae to hand it over to himself, whereupon he buried it in the Macedonian fashion at Memphis.4 But Ptolemy Philadelphus, son and successor of Lagos, translated the body to Alexandria, where it lay in a Alexander was honoured as a hero with magnificent golden sarcophagus. sacrifices and games. Yet his remains, though saved from the Gauls, did not altogether escape the spoiler, for when Ptolemy Cocces seized the throne for a brief space, he stole the golden sarcophagus, and in Strabo's day (circ. Christian era) the relics of the great conqueror lay in a sarcophagus of glass. The tomb, was in a court of the famous palace close to the museum (with called the Senma, its noble library) and around it were the graves of the Ptolemaic kings.5 We may have little doubt that the tombs of the ancient kings of Macedon at Aegae, opened by the Gauls, were great tumuli, closely resembling the 3 Diod. Sic. XVIII. 26, I, 2. 1 Phot. Bibl., p. 444, b. 39 (cited by Nauck),
P 426.
2

4 Paus. I. 6, 3.

Vol. II. 779 (Reiske); Di:)d. Sic. XXII. 12.

5 Strabo 675, 1-22 (Didot).

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numerous giant barrows still on the hills of the Vardar (Axius) valley and on those above the valleys of the Struma (anc. Strymon), whilst there are many similar on the hills that surround the valley of the Kritchma, the last affluent of the Maritza (Hebrus) before it reaches Philippopolis; many of these have been partially explored during the last seventy years, including the most remarkable of them, known as Doukhova Moghila (' the Barrow of the Spirit '),1 whilst the excavations show the character of the offerings made at the tombs of the mighty dead. Similar barrows of all sizes are found in the district of Glasinatz in Bosnia,2 at Jezerine in Herzegovina, regions occupied by the ancient Illyrians, all over the Balkans, and in Greece itself. The material remains found at such barrows (presently to be supported by literary evidence), make it certain that at the tombs of Aegae sacrifices and other honours were regularly offered on fixed occasions to the kings that slept within, as was customary not only in ancient Europe, but is still practised by not a few races under the sun. Herodotus3 has left us a graphic picture of the funeral of a Thracian noble: 'They lay out the dead for three days, then after killing all kinds of victims, and first making lamentation, they feast; after that they make away with the body, either by fire or else by burial in the earth, and when they have built a barrow they set on foot all kinds of contests, wherein the greatest prizes are offered for the hardest fashion of single combat.' In the case of kings and other great men the funeral rites were repeated seasonally at the barrows. That there were such celebrations at Aegae, and that they were held by Archelaus, is proved by Arrian :4 'Alexander on his return from the destruction of Thebes (335 B.c.) offered the sacrifice to the Olympian Zeus still going on from the time of Archelaus, and the games at Aegae he arranged as an Olympic festival; some say also that he held contests in honour of the Muses, and that during this time news came that the statue of Orpheus, the son of Oeagrus, the Thracian in Pieria, was continually sweating.' Diodorus5 gives a somewhat different version: 'Alexander on his return from Greece incited his soldiers to contests, offered sumptuous sacrifices to the gods at Dium in Macedonia, and celebrated in honour of Zeus and the Muses the dramatic contests which his predecessor Archelaus had first established, continuing the festival for nine days, and naming each after one of the Muses; and he likewise entertained all his captains and the envoys from the various cities in a grand pavilion which he had built.' It must be noted that Diodorus does not refer to Aegae, but makes the great festival take place at Dium, a little place at the foot of Olympus, on the high road from Greece into Macedonia, a very unlikely
1 Ridgeway, The Origin and Influence of the Thoroughbred Horse, pp. 106-7. 2 Id., Early Age of Greece, Vol. I., pp. 431
Xiyovc-v

sqq. 3 V. 8. 4 I. I I.

dr' 'ApXEXciov rtL

Schol., who places the festival at Dium, and mentions the nine days for the nine Muses, 7-v Ovo-Cav 7 AL 7r r Tr 'OXvu[ric, KaL r-,jY probably following Diodorus.
COavoe KaOecTrW?, Kal dyvr rhv

iv A'yCEs 6&ifOqKe r7'OX6,Lr a, ol U Kai rais Mo6oaLLs Erot7oe. 6rt dy-yova 5 XVII. 16, 3; cf. Dem. de fals. leg. 192-3 with

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place at which to hold a dramatic festival and entertain the envoys from all his cities. From these two passages it seems (i) that there were old games at Aegae; (2) that Archelaus established dramatic contests there; (3) that he founded the sacrifice to Zeus at Dium ; (4) that Alexander sacrificed to Olympic Zeus at Dium; (5) that he celebrated the ancient games at Aegae, but after the fashion of the Olympic contests (as had taken place at Olympia itself, when the games set up by Heracles in honour of Pelops were later dedicated to Zeus, and just as also at Nemea the games in honour of Archemorus were later given over to Zeus); and (6) he held in honour of the Muses the dramatic contests which had been set up by Archelaus, but, as we may infer from the evidence of Diodorus combined with that of Arrian, not to the Muses, an innovation made by Alexander. That Archelaus did establish dramatic performances, though possibly not to the Muses, but in honour of his ancestors, is rendered certain by the fact that he not only invited Euripides, but also his younger contemporary Agathon, who, according to the Scholiast on the Frogs, continued a long time at the Macedonian court. We may therefore conclude with high probability that Euripides wrote the Archelaus for the festival held at Aegae in honour of the old kings, on whose goodwill, according to the belief of Thracians, Greeks and other races, the prosperity of their people largely depended. We have thus a close parallel to the 'Tragic dances' at Sicyon in honour of Adrastus. As 'Pieria and Olympus, and Pimpla, and Libethron [the burial-place of Orpheus the Thracian] of old were regions and mountains of Thrace, though later under Macedonian sway,'1 the absence of any mention of the great aboriginal Thracian hero-deity (infra)2 in connexion with the dramatic performances at Aegae strongly confirms the present writer's view that tragedy began not in the cult of Dionysus, but in that of the dead, and that when employed in honour of Dionysus it is only a single instance of a great worldwide principle. The Bacchae is admitted by all to have been composed in that part of Thrace then known as Macedonia, all being agreed that its wild scenery is based upon that country, though the scene is laid in Boeotia. It was first called Pentheus, after the ill-fated Theban king, whose resistance to Dionysus and his maenads led to his destruction, and thereby the glorification of the Thracian hero as an all-powerful deity. The famous chorus (408 sqq.) in praise of Pieria is peculiarly appropriate if the play were first performed at Aegae, the ancient capital of that region. There are thus two plays of Euripides confessedly written in Macedon, each on a native hero and under local influences. I would add the Rhesus as a third. Its theme, like those of the A rchelaus and the Bacchae, is a native hero. It may be at once pointed out that almost all the critics, no matter how much they may differ on other points, are agreed that the author of the play knew
Kai "OXvAros 1 Strabo 404, 38-40, IItepia T,ycp ~'v P OpdKL Ka Idi LrXac Kal Aift70pov rQ 7raXa Ma?ECS6v. Xwpi Kai 6p7y,VriV8 2 Herod. V. 7 UXovo"t

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Thrace intimately. When this is once admitted, it will explain not a few of the difficulties raised by those who doubt its genuineness. The plot is taken direct from the Tenth Book of the Iliad, and this accounts for certain elements in its diction made much of by the critics, whilst the last scene is not Homeric, but is a native Thracian element. If the play were composed in Thrace by Euripides, the objection of the critics that it is unlike any other extant play of the poet is at once met. For the poet deliberately selected the Doloneia, with its description of the arrival of the Thracian king at Troy and his dramatic death immediately after, and made it all the more attractive for a native audience by adding to the Homeric story the purely Thracian element of the Muse. For a Macedonian-Thracian audience at the festival of Aegae there would have been little interest in one of the poet's philosophizing plays, such as the HiPPolytus. The theme of Rhesus gave a rude martial people exactly what they wanted-war and slaughter-just as in Elizabethan times the audiences delighted in plays such as The Famous Victories of Henry V., utilized by Shakespeare for his Life of King Henry the Fifth, which cannot be said to have any plot, but simply is a series of martial events. In historical times Rhesus was still famous throughout Thrace, whilst there is no doubt that he was venerated in the Strymon area, since the Athenian general Hagnon, when founding Amphipolis in 437 B.C., fetched certain bones supposed to be his from Troy and buried them near that river. Philostratus, writing in the third century after Christ, knows the story of Rhesus (whom Diomedes slew), and describes a sanctuary (rh leppv) of the hero on Rhodope (the next highest range in Thrace to the Haemus). It was inhabited by the Agrians, whilst the Bessi, who possessed the oracle of Dionysus, bordered on it. In his sanctuary Rhesus bred horses, marched in armour, hunted, as he did in life, and kept off pestilence from his land, whilst the boars and wild beasts came voluntarily to his altar for sacrifice. The author of the Rhesus makes the hero's mother a Muse, one of the Pierides, to whom either Archelaus, or more probably Alexander, set up dramatic contests at Aegae. Critics have censured the introduction of the Muse at the end of the play; but if it were composed for a performance at Aegae in Pieria, the difficulty felt by the critics would be at once removed. The arguments for the genuineness of the play are: (I) That it has come down to us in the MSS. with the admittedly genuine plays of Euripides; (2) that one of the two arguments prefixed to the Rhesuis, though mentioning that 'some suspected that it was not genuine owing to its Sophoclean stamp,' states that it was inscribed as ' genuine' in the Didascaliae, and that the interest it shows in astronomy makes it confessedly Euripidean; (3) that no other play named Rhesus was known in antiquity, which might thus get into the Didascaliae; (4) that no one has ever shown any motive for substituting another play on the same theme, and with the same name (supposing that such ever existed) for the genuine play of Euripides in the MSS.; (5) and that no one has ever attempted to show how such a substitution could have escaped the lynx-eyed critics of

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Alexandria; (6) that the writers of the Scholia on 11. 252 and 430, though criticizing the author for the use of certain terms, do not question the genuineness of the play, whilst in the Scholia on 11.508 and 529, where Dionysodorus and Crates are cited, these critics in the very act of fault-finding proclaim their belief in the genuineness of the play, and there is no suggestion that the Scholiast who cited them was a whit more sceptical than they. Finally, it is probable that Parmeniscus (Schol. 529) and Aristarchus (Schol. 540) were of the same opinion. In the Scholion on 1. 141, where MS. V. reads TrvpaiOet arTparT6 'Apy/Xa9, he recognizes that the verb is an incorrectly formed compound, and therefore states that the verse (' aoTiXO) is not by Euripides. Professor von WilamowitzMoellendorf would calmly delete 'the verse' (0 ',-TiXo) as an addition by some Byzantine scholar, and then explains the scholion as stating that ' the play is not by Euripides.' On this scholion, when mutilated most unjustifiably by himself, Wilamowitz bases his assault on the play, the rest of his attack being simply a series of 'supposes' and guesses-e.g. that the Rhesus was composed (circa 370-60 B.c.) by Theodectes. Let us examine briefly this theory. Theodectes was a native of Phaselis, a Dorian colony on the border of Pamphylia and Lycia. He died at Athens at the age of forty-one, and his townsmen erected a statue in his honour shortly before Alexander invaded Asia (333 B.c.). His birth may therefore be placed circa 376-5 B.C. He spent the greater part of his life at Athens, studied rhetoric under Isocrates, and is also said to have been a pupil of Plato and of Aristotle. But there is not the slightest evidence that he was ever in Macedona fact of great importance, since all are agreed that the author of the Rhesus was familiar with that region. There is also no evidence that, as some have supposed, Alexander had known Theodectes personally, although when he was at Phaselis he visited and crowned with garlands the statue of Theodectes 'to show his respect for a man who had been associated with himself by means of Aristotle and philosophy 'l--i.e., who had, like himself, studied philosophy under Aristotle. There is, therefore, not a scintilla of evidence to support the guess of Dr. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorf. That, however, Theodectes was a dramatist, and wrote at least one play of great interest through its bearing on the general principle of this paper, there is no doubt. Who has not heard of the grief of Artemisia the Carian queen when Mausolus her husband-brother died, of the magnificence with which she celebrated his obsequies (in 352 B.c.), and of that great monument which became one of the seven wonders of the world and the name of which has become generic for sepulchres of surpassing size and splendour? On the occasion of its consecration the queen offered a prize for the best panegyric on her husband, and for it competed the three greatest of the pupils of Isocrates, Theopompus, Naucrates and Theodectes, some say even Isocrates himself, and that he, like Naucrates and Theodectes, was defeated by Theopompus. But
1 Plut.
Alex. 17: rjI' droaobs-

r- yevoAvy

SV' 'ApLwrordvY

b KCa LXoooOpLav 6X

Tlrp6s r &v vpa.

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Theodectes, though defeated in the oration, secured a signal success in another form of literature. It seems certain that Artemisia had offered a prize for dramatic competitions, and that Theodectes was victorious in this contest. Aulus Gellius (N. A. X. 18, 7) says 'exstat nunc quoque Theodecti tragoedia quae inscribitur Mausolus, in qua eum magis quam in prosa placuisse Hyginus in exemplis refert.' Cf. Suidas, s.v. Theodectes. As Archelaus of Macedon, had already established prizes for dramatic performances as part of the honours rendered to the ancient kings of Macedon in their tombs at Aegae, there is no reason to doubt that Artemisia followed a like practice at the funeral of Mausolus. Finally, I may point out that here once more as at Aegae we find dramas on the life and history of a king used to honour him, as in the earliest notice that we have of tragic dances that have come down to us-those in honour of Adrastus of Sicyon, parallels to which I have elsewhere1 cited from Egypt, Persia, India, Java, China and Japan. Thus the whole of the ancient evidence is in favour of the genuineness of the Rhesus. We have already mentioned the statement in the First Argument only expression of doubt in antiquity-the that 'some suspected the play not to be by Euripides on the ground that it shows a "Sophoclean stamp"' (0 But as we have 'o0icXieto9 XapaTcr'p). out the play was that the author of the Argument not only points already seen, entered as 'genuine' (yvruo-tov) in the Didascaliae, but holds that the interest shown in astronomy demonstrates that it is by Euripides. The remark on its ' Sophoclean stamp' is probably best explained by the fact that the style differs from that usual in the plays of the poet, and because he had taken the theme direct from Homer, as done by Sophocles in certain cases. Wilamowitz suggests that the play was based upon the Poimenes of Sophocles, of which the fragments are too scanty for us to form any judgment. The writer of Argument I. further demonstrates his belief in the genuineness of the play, by stating that 'two prologues are current; Dicaearchus, for instance, in starting his argument to the Rhesus, thus writes explicitly : i'm' EVOEX?7V0V y eL.P77Xa7O9 cOrcp/yo9 Moreover, in some copies another prologue is current, very prosaic and not like Euripides, and perhaps some of the actors vamped it up (3teo-icevarcore, Lev), and it runs thus.' Then follow eleven iambic lines of poor quality. It is thus clear that there were two prologues known to the ancients. This view gains strong support from the fact that not only did the poet leave two different openings to the Iphigenia in A ulis, an admittedly late play, one lyrical, the other iambic, but that he left two different iambic openings to the Archelaus, which no one doubts was his own work and written in his last three years. Aristophanes, in 405 B.c. (Ranae, I2o6-8), makes Euripides himself cite the opening of the Archelaus ast Dramas and Dramatic Dances of Non-European Races.

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Ai'ryvrr7o,

RIDGEWAY

'rXe^o-ro9 io-rTrap'rat Xad7o rsq6 kiv 7TX -77 rrat" 7rev7r-7ova av7-X) "Apyoq ,ca'raaox&v. But many later writers concur in giving a quite different beginning, of which eight lines survive : Zava( o Ovyare'p v 7ra7-7p 67rrEvT7icovra
Neixov

Xtor WvicXXtL7rovJ cC yalaq iwop, ic.r.X.

The scholiast, ad loc., says of the lines spoken by Euripides: 'This is the beginning of the Archelaus, as some falsely assert. For no such speech of Euripides is now found. For Aristarchus states that it is not part of the Archelaus, unless the poet himself altered it later, and Aristophanes cited the original opening.' The evidence of Aristophanes cannot be gainsaid, and there seems no doubt that Euripides himself not simply revised but altered completely the prologue of the Archelaus before his death. In view of this evidence there seems little reason to doubt that he left also two prologues to the Rhesus and that death prevented him from destroying or revising the prosaic one preserved in Argument I. But my friend, Dr. Mackail, writes to me: ' Both in the Rhesus and in the Iphigenia in A ulis it seems to me that the lyrical prologue is the opening scene of the original performance. The iambic prologue to the Iphigenia certainly bears all the marks of the Euripidean style, and it is quite possible that he wrote both prologues, with a view possibly to an Athenian as well as to a Macedonian production. The extant fragment of the iambic prologue to the Rhesus can hardly be by him. I conjecture that it was the result of a clumsy attempt to do for the Rhesus what had already been done (whether by Euripides or not) for the Iphigenia in A ulis. Now this view is not only consistent with your contention (which I think may be said to have a high probability) that the Rhesus was written for and brought out at the royal funeral games at Aegae, but the two things seem to me to reinforce one another very strongly.' In any case it is clear that Dicaearchus (ob. circa, 285 B.c.)2 had no more doubts about the genuineness of the Rhesus than had the grammarian Aristophanes, (flor. 264 B.c.), the pupil of Zenodotus and the master of Aristarchus. It is incredible that Dicaearchus, when drawing up systematically the Arguments of the plays of Euripides, should have taken as a genuine work of that poet a Rhesus by Theodectes (or anyone else), his own elder contemporary and, like himself, a pupil of Aristotle. But in his scepticism Wilamowitz simply followed most of the critics. Valckenaer, followed by Hermann and Hagenbach, condemned the play on the ground that it has more /irrag elp9jyva than all the other extant plays and fragments of Euripides put together." Later, Eysert4 compiled a complete list of
1 Nauck, op. cit., p. 427, with the sources there cited. 2 Dicaearchus, the philosopher, wrote a special treatise called 'T~ro0lretErTyv EipLTrov Kal oMoKXeovS JIAOWv.

3 I have made use of the excellent Introduction prefixed by Mr. W. H. Porter to his edition of the Rhesus (Cambridge, 1916) in these pages. 4 Rhesus im Lichte des euripideischen Sprachgebrauches (1891), cited by Porter, p. xlv.

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the Prra? elpy~Lva for the plays and fragments of Euripides, and showed that the Rhesus contains only one-eighteenth of the total number. The number of such per Ioo lines in the various plays is as follows: Cycl. 31i, Rhesus 2"81, Iph. T. 2-34, Phoen. 2-27, Bacch. 2'33, Ion 2"22, Her. Fur. 1"97, Iph. Aul. r196, Suppl. 1"86, El. 1"84, Hel. 1'59, Troad 1"35, Hyp. 1'29, Or. 1"28, Hec. 1"23, Andr. 0o79, Her. 0o76, Med. o063, Alc. o060. This method places the Rhesus close to the Bacchae composed in Macedon after 409 B.c., and far away from the Alcestis, 438 B.c. Thus the argument from internal evidence so far broke down completely. Mr. E. Harrison applied a verse test '-the ratio of iambi to spondees in feet He found in all tragedies a preponderance of I, 3 and 5 of trimeters. in iambi and 3, and also that this preponderance is greater in spondees over I the Rhesus than in any other tragedy: in foot 5 in all tragedies the iambus prevails, and to this law the Rhesus conforms. Thus in this play the first half of the verse is heavier than the normal. But almost all scholars hold that the Bacchae has an unusual number of resolved feet because of its wild passion and orgiastic emotions. According to Mr. Harrison, there is I resolved foot in 2 trimeters in the Orestes, I to 2.3 in the Bacchae, and the same proportion in the Iphigenia in A ulis. The frenzy of the distraught Orestes in the play named after him accounts admirably for the large proportion of resolved feet, whilst in the Iphigenia the extremity of pathos and emotion arising from her father's resolve to sacrifice her, the anger of Clytemnestra on the discovery of her husband's deception, the despair of the heroine herself and her appeal to her father for pity, render most appropriate the unusual number of resolved feet. That the poet employed his metres designedly is shown by the introduction of the excited dialogue in trochaic tetrameters between Clytemnestra and Achilles, followed by a second great speech by Iphigenia in the same metre, whilst he makes the Chorus in the Hercules Furens, in their horror on seeing Lyssa or Madness descending upon the palace, break into a splendid passage expressed in trochaic tetrameters. If the poet suited his metres to the dominant feeling in these plays, why should he not have done the same in another ? The Rhesus is gloomy throughout, and the heavier first part of the verse may well have been used to express that note. The breach of the law of the Cretic in the opening lines of the Ion0 X"aXKoLto"A7rXae, vroTL ovpavov, EWV OEV) rraXatovol~ov O EKTptL/Ow,
e.ye.varo paL/L6Vwv XCd-pvA TTYoe Znljv, 'EptL~uv
.LE

a. cfo'eo. d

Maiav,

/ '.'

is admitted by most scholars2 to be deliberate to express the toil of Atlas under his dreadful burden. This is but a particular case of the principle found in the Rhesus, where the tone of the whole play is dreary from beginning to end. All those who hold the play to be genuine except the present writer3 make
2 Hermann, Paley, Tyrrell, etc.

1 Class. Quart., 1924, pp. 206-2 I.

3 Ridgeway, 147-50.

Origin of Tragedy (ig91),

pp.

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it an early work of the poet, but the only grounds for this are that (I) the author of Argument I. says that some suspected it not to be by Euripides 'on account of its suggesting a rather Sophoclean stamp,' but, as we have already seen, he at once adds 'it is inscribed as genuine in the Didascaliae and that the interest in astronomy shows it to be a genuine work; and (2) that Crates of Alexandria (flor. 213 B.c.), who held the play to be genuine, regarded it as an early work because of what he considered an astronomical blunder in 1. 528-9, from which he inferred that it must be a work of the poet's youth. Dr. A. S. Way' has shown that the astronomy is correct, and thus the only ancient evidence for the early date of the play is gone. But it has been assumed by Dr. Leaf, Professor G. G. Murray, and Mr. W. H. Porter that the play was written to encourage the Athenians to plant Amphipolis (437 B.c.), and Mr. G. C. Richards,2 whilst keeping an open mind for the authorship of the play, agrees in this dating. As the only reference to Athens or Athena in the play is the bitter attack made on the latter by the Muse (a strange form of encouragement) and as the play is distinctly written from the Thracian rather than from the Greek point of view, there is not the slightest ground for believing it to have any reference to the planting of Amphipolis. Professor Murray tries to support his case by suggesting that the play was a Pro-Satyric like the Alcestis (438 B.c.), but there is no character in the Rhesus like the Heracles of the Alcestis, nor does a single gleam of humour light it up. Any evidence to be derived from metrical tests is directly against an early date for the Rhesus. Mr. Harrison writes: ' Its total of trisyllabic feet offers another difficulty to those who would assign the Rhesus to the early days of Euripides. In this respect the plays fall into two unequal groups. The smaller and earlier group is close and consistent and stricter in this matter than Aeschylus as a whole or Sophocles as a whole: the Alcestis (438 B.C.), the Medea (431 B.c.) the Heraclidae, the Hippolytus (428 B.C.) with one such foot in 15. 2, 13. 8, 13. 4, and 16. 3 trimeters respectively. At one end of the large and later group stands the Andromache with one in 6. 4, at the other end the Bacchae, the Iphigenia in Aulis, and the Orestes,with one in 2. 3, 2. 3, 2. I. To which group belongs the Rhesus, with one in 10. 6? It is about midway between the Heraclidae and the Andronzache. By this criterion as by its spondees it would not seem to be a very early play, certainly not his earliest.' But what I have said above respecting the value of metrical tests holds equally for both Mr. Harrison's 'spondees' and his ' trisyllabic ' criteria. But though, as we have already seen above (pp. 12, 13), Professors Eysert and Rolfe had demonstrated the futility of the verbal methods of Valckenaer and his school, Professor Pearson has lately returned to the attack ; though he makes no effort to revive the arguments of the older verbal critics, he 'holds that a closer scrutiny of the language shows that it [Rhesus] belongs to a much later
1 Cited by Porter, op. cit., p. 72.
2 Class.

Quart. X., pp. 192-7.

3 0. cit., p. 210. 4 Class. Rev., 1921, pp. 52-61.

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era,' and that 'the play, if not by Euripides, was under his influence.' His broad objections are: '(I) The absence of pathos and sententiousness, and (2) a marked difference from his ordinary style of writing.' But the lament of the Muse for her dead son is full of pathos, and Professor Pearson himself admits good examples of sententiousness in 11.750 and 980. He says that it might be argued that it was the work of a young man under Aeschylean influence, but he admits the validity of Professor Murray's argument based on the fragments of the Peliades, the poet's earliest work, with which he gained the prize 456 B.C., that this is not so, though he firmly and rightly rejects Professor Murray's 'Pro-Satyric' theory of the play. Professor Pearson 'perused, the Rhesus with a view to testing all the more noteworthy words,' but admits that 'they do not lead to a positive conclusion.' He found 90 approximations to Euripides, 30 to Sophocles, and 25 to Aeschylus. He accordingly came to the conclusion that 'if Euripides did not write the Rhesus, then either he copied it or its author copied him.' He proceeds: 'The influence of Homer is unmistakable,' and he admits that ' Eysert had some justification for saying that the authorship of Euripides could not be disproved by argument based on language.' He then attempted to provide a standard of Euripidean diction which could be made applicable to the Rhesus by collecting an equivalent number of lines from the Alcestis-the total containing the same number of iambic, anapaestic and lyric verses. He chose the Alcestis (I) because of its date, and (2) to meet the Pro-Satyric argument. But as the A lcestis is dated 438 B.C., and the Rhesus with its extraordinary knowledge of Thrace could only have been composed by Euripides after 409 B.C., the value of Professor Pearson's comparison of it with the Alcestis is at once discounted. He admits that a large part of the vocabulary is irrelevant, while he found that a comparison of the use of prepositions was 'futile.' He finally based his case against the Rhesus on the relative 1 a,a/ , 6, frequency of 33 small words: the article, the pronouns, `, ~y rdy , ai;6t, 0 e, etc., in the Alcestis and the Rhesus.- The ratio was 4: 3. He admits that' the dissection of phraseology is not decisive,' yet says that 'there is a strong case to go to the jury.' But the judge in his charge would certainly have pointed out that the prosecution had not given any evidence for the existence of another Rhesus, had not attempted to show motive for the substitution of a spurious play for the genuine work of Euripides, nor suggested any machinery by which such a fraud, if attempted, could have been effected. But apart from this, the difference of some thirty years between the A lcestis and the Rhesus, if genuine, discounts his whole argument, whilst the natural difference in diction between a semi-comic and a solemn heroic play would be sufficient to account for the wide difference even in the occurrence of such words as he selects. Dr. Pearson, indeed, could not have chosen a worse play than the Alcestis for obtaining a standard of ordinary Euripidean diction. There is no need to elaborate the difference known to exist between an author's style on different themes and at different times of life. It will suffice to cite
Op. cit., pp. 57-8.

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here the difference between Carlyle's Burns and his French Revolution. In any case, nothing but a norm based on all the other plays (the Cyclops excepted) would be any use for his purpose. Dr. Pearson tries to support his contention on broader grounds. (I) ' Since those who defend the Rhesus all [inaccurate] claim it as an early play,' he urges that 'an early date is rendered improbable by the use of the deus ex machina and the division of single verses between speakers in anapaestic and trochaic systems, though not in iambic trimeters.' But these arguments, though valid against those who place the Rhesus near in time to the Alcestis, strengthen my position that it was written in Macedon after 409 B.C. (2) He stresses the marked tendency of the author to repeat his own phrases, but this like the existence of two separate prologues, as in the case of the Iphigenia in A ulis, written at the close of the poet's life, would point to the play having been written shortly before the poet's death, and therefore likely to be not fully revised. But apart from this, the same charge can be well maintained against the admittedly genuine plays of the poet. We need only occurs twice in the same line. Finally, point to Ion 2 (supra), where Oecwv after trying to show weakness in the structure of the play, a charge which might be urged just as effectively against some of the poet's undoubted works, Dr. Pearson gives his own case away by saying that 'The curious thing about the Rhesus is that, when all has been said, the play is not nearly so bad as it ought to be '-words which might well be levelled at several of the poet's admitted dramas. Dr. Pearson admits the 'skill' of the plot, that the literary workmanship is by no means 'contemptible,' that the lyrics are fine, and some of the speeches very effective (e.g., those of Hector and the charioteer, The gravamen of his case, such as it is, only falls against those 'admirable'). who place the play about 440 B.C.,he himself admitting that 'some of his charges might be made against genuine plays.' Finally, as I have already pointed out, he makes no attempt to show any motive for replacing the genuine Rhesus by a spurious one, for the existence of which there is not a scintilla of evidence, or how, supposing that such ever existed, it could have cuckooed the genuine play out of the MSS., the argument by which I mainly defended the genuineness of the play in 1911.1 Wecklein and others in modern times have laid great stress on the presence in the Rhesus of some unusual words, e.g. 'rporawl:

Xp)77-rporav Ta ewaOV VeV cal E7EpTL it KaTaoa-corov, Opovpeut cK.T.T.

/ v &a e6vrav

(523-4-)

This may well be a native military term, adopted by the poet. It does not look like a Greek locative, but rather from a closely cognate tongue or dialect. If Aeschylus, as is shown by his Prometheus (11. 373 sqq.), was not merely impressed by the eruptious and lava streams of Etna, and the local myth of Typhoeus crushed 'beneath its roots,' but, as was stated by the ancients and is admitted by the moderns, adopted in Sicily such words as rresdpo-Lo, 7?realXJLtos
I

Origin of Tragedy (19II),

pp. 147-50.

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and 8ovv6k, why should not Euripides have done the same in Macedon, especially when composing a play in that country itself and upon a native hero? That men of surpassing genius seize and assimilate with great rapidity the salient features of landscape and climate and the peculiarities of a race, its thought and diction is proved by Sir Walter Scott's Pirate (1821). The feeling for Shetland scenery and for the old life is declared by Shetlanders to be absolutely correct, and yet Scott spent but a few days in the island (1814). In a still briefer visit to a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, he not only picked up a typical incident in college life, but grasped completely that intangible effect of that college life known only in the two ancient English Universities, and in Trinity College, Dublin, the daughter of Cambridge, which he has set forth in Woodstock(1826) in the meeting between Dr. Ratcliffe, the High Church Royalist Divine and Nehemiah Holdenough, the Puritan Minister, in whom the bitterness of religious and party strife was at least temporarily extinguished by the memory of the night when they robbed the President's orchard at Caius (now represented by one old Ribstone Pippin). I Tennyson was but little in Ireland, yet in a poem on a poor crazy Irish peasant woman there is not a wrong term or turn. Again, in the final a of 'EKr7opeta'Errveryap 7yaf yi9vao-'CEKT6PELta Xtp (762.) -the critics see another cause for damning the play. But the evidence for varying the quantity of syllables in proper names, metro cogente, is so strong that this objection has no weight. It will suffice to cite and 'I7rnopwS'ovno9 with Th. (Aesch. cf. Cho. 483, 542; 1038, Paley's note), 1lapOevowratov 'Irrr168aLov, (Ar. Eq. 327), whilst the fact that in trimeters anapaests in the case of proper names are admissible in the first four feet demonstrates the licence allowed in such words. In proof of the spuriousness of the play the critics also point to &vepopTro3at.aV?
S'8Y KpvTrrT0

avOp(0ro~atcLf.lv X'rcwv 0adow , E.oleratc Bda/K XO vwrPOc77- swo-rE Iarryyatov rerpav ' OEJW-'9 701 0E0k. (970-3.) WKfe, l E8'Lov But this is due to a lack of a fuller knowledge of Greek religion, and from their regarding like everyone else Bacchus and Dionysus as one and the same from all time. All have assumed that in the lines just cited BdLXov 'rpofnrncj means Orpheus. But the tomb of the latter was at Libethra, on the side of Mount Olympus, not on Pangaeum, and, moreover, there is no evidence that he ever acted as the expounder of Bacchus. On the contrary, Herodotus (II. 81) distinguishes between Orphic and Bacchic rites (not Dionysiac), putting Orphic first. An examination of the facts points to Dionysus as not being identical with Bacchus, but rather that he was an old Thracian chief of the
1 Complete works (1897), p. 555. B

v cawVrpotsiri {rrapryV`pov XOOv\

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Pangaean region, who was regarded by the natives as a reincarnation of Bacchus. Thus in the Homeric Hymn to Pan (XIX. 46) he is termed 6 as also by Herodotus (IV. 79), who terms him in the same BaKxxeZo At6vvo-o-, ' 6 passage simply BaKX6eo0, whilst Sophocles (O.T. 1105) calls him BaKcXgeO, 6Oek, and Aeschylus (Ar. Ran. 1259) terms him Tr0vBaKXeov avvaIcTa. The meaning of the termination -ELovis clear, 'sprung from,' 'son of,' being often used as a patronymic. Thus Plato (Gorgias 482A) in the same passage speaks ' of Alcibiades as the son of Cleinias (ra^, KX'tviov) and also as KXEtweltoi. rat (Hiero); 01. II. 113, KpduvLc rat 'Pav Cf. Pindar, Pyth. II. 18, Aetvo[levete Bacchae calls in the (Zeus). Euripides 49E0, cf. id. 412 Dionysus BdcKXLOo be Pind. with which IV. 01. 39, Iloo-Lctdwo compared may 7wpoj3alKytov 8alowv, ( a as Such seems combination never to v Kp6vtov. 'AnroXXovto eOv= 'Ar6XX'o an occur. In Soph. O.C. 1494 there is Oe, apparent exception, HIloo-ELtvwLw but as Jebb could find no parallel to it but 81q7'HpaKXt7y, which is not a parallel at all, his fine instinct led him to doubt the MSS. and to suggest (eo no more=' the god Bacchus' than TeXaiwvzoo9 BdKcXLtos Iloo-et'wvtav. hero Telamon.' the (Ajax)=' ;ipwO That Dionysus was buried on the Pangaean peak is clear from Herodotus VII. III. There was his oracle controlled by the Bessi, who were neighbours of Rhodope where was the sanctuary of Rhesus (supra) and there was a female Promantis, as at Delphi. But the resemblances to Delphi were still closer than Herodotus states, for Aeschylus speaks of Apollo at Delphi as rpooqrjnryAt6ov (Eum. I9), and Euripides of the Pythia as the 7rpof0pTs of Apollo (Ion 42). So in his sanctuary on the Pangaean peak Dionysus was the prophetesof Bacchus, and the Promantis was the prophetis of Dionysus. There is an interesting passage in the Book of Wonderful Stories,' where the writer after mentioning that in Crestonia beyond the land of the Bisaltae the hare has two livers, and that there is a place measuring a plethron in which any animal that enters falls dead, tells us that there is in that region a large and fair sanctuary (iEpdv)of Dionysus, and according to report at the time of the festival and when the sacrifice is made, whenever the god intends to produce a good season a great blaze of fire appears, and all those who dwell round the temenosbehold it; but if he means a bad season, the light does not appear, and darkness prevails as on ordinary nights. These interesting details apparently refer to the shrine of Dionysus on the Pangaean peak, and to a festival held in the fore part of the year. If it should be objected that whilst avatars, imams, and other reincarnations such as those of Buddha are familiar in the Orient, there is no evidence for such in Greece, I may at once point out that Mithridates the Great, king of Pontus, believed that he was an incarnation of Dionysus and struck a series of coins in his towns of Panticapaeum and Apollonia in South Russia, emphasizing his doctrine, with a head of Dionysus on one side and a bunch of grapes on the other.2
1 [Arist.], p. 843a, 18.
2 E. H. Minns, Scythians and Greeks, p. 629.

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IN MACEDON

19

As Euripides used the term all"wov of the Olympian gods (Ion 4, supra) as well as of heroes, in order to express accurately the condition of Dionysus and Rhesus, who was to be (like the former) less than a true Olympian god, but more than an ordinary dead man, he uses most appropriately the term avOpowo8a6trov, for Rhesus, though not a true god, will be more than a mere man, since he will 'see light' (XS'7rov Sbdo9)which the ordinary dead could not. From the Bacchae Euripides plainly knew that Dionysus was but an avatar or reincarnation of Bacchus, and the fact that the author of the Rhesus used the term avOpowro8atowvof him confirms instead of in any way weakening the Euripidean authorship of the play. It must not be forgotten, as is almost universally done by scholars, that when Dionysus (i.e. the cult of Dionysus) entered Greece, he was simply regarded as a hero and for long after also. Thus at Athens on the eve of the Great Dionysia his statue was borne from his temple near the theatre along the road to Eleutherae, by which Amphictyon was said to have brought him to Athens. The statue was then placed on the edge of an Eschara, 'hearth,' and sacrifice was made to him, not as a god, but as a hero, for Porphyry makes it clear that B topoL, 'Ecxdapat, and B6Opotwere for gods, heroes, and the ordinary dead respectively. So, too, the women of Elis invoked Dionysus as hero (Plut. Quaest. Graec. XXXVI). Nor must it be forgotten that at Sicyon Heracles was worshipped both as a hero and as a god. Let us now sum up. As the external evidence is clearly in favour of the genuineness of the Rhesus, and the assaults based upon language, diction, and style have all broken down, and as there was no other play of the same name known to the ancients, we may accept it as genuine. The Tenth Book of the Iliad on which it is based, long condemned as 'late,' is now admitted by leading scholars to be an integral part of the great epic, whilst the attacks made a century ago on certain Platonic diologues were dead by 1870, and scholars have long accepted without cavil Thrasyllus' Canon of the Platonic writings. If the Rhesus be genuine, and there seems now to be no doubt of that, then like the A rchelaus and the Bacchce (all three on native heroes), it was probably composed for and performed at the games in honour of the dead kings at Aegae. Finally, it has been shown that the universal belief amongst scholars that from the first Dionysus and Bacchus were identical can no longer be maintained.
WILLIAM
CAMBRIDGE.

RIDGEWAY.

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